Open Sky at Kunstmuseum Thun- Curated by Helen Hirsh
April 19 – June 15, 2008

Simone Aaberg Kærn (born in 1969 in Copenhagen) picks out the dream of flying as the central theme in her works and broaches the role of women in flying. With various media like photography, video and object art, she deals with the social, historical and political dimensions of aviation and joins them together in installations in the exhibition room.
In the process, the thoughts of unbound freedom in the open sky that is associated with flying is a recurring theme in the oeuvre of Aaberg Kærn. In 2002, the artist and trained pilot flew in her small plane from Copenhagen over the Hindukush to Kabul to realise the dream of flying of an Afghani girl – an event that became an adventurous and risky journey interlinked with all the hurdles of today’s civil aviation. Also, the motif of the woman in the male-dominated aviation is perceived in many of her works. Specially for the exhibition at Kunstmuseum Thun, her first solo exhibition in Switzerland, she has added the portrait of Swiss women military pilots to her work with American and Russian women military pilots of the Second World War, Afghani women helicopter pilots and Turkish women fighter pilots.
Sky and space are playing fields for power and politics, but they are also equally the place of freedom and self-realisation.